Corrupted File?

Thanks Mo for the info on the 65 limit. One of my 42 slide files recently corrupted and I was working from the hard drive. I tried Mark's solution's of starting a blank project and importing the slides 1 by 1 to find out which one was corrupted. I tried this three times before giving up! First time, I tried importing just slide 1 - long, long delay importing, I had to reboot to get out of the end task routine. Tried this with slide 2 and 3 - same thing. I am working from the Cap 2 trial - and will be installing the licensed version soon as well - hopefully this issue is fixed in the licensed version.

I know people come here hoping to find a fix for all that work they did - I know I did at first. I did learn not to save to LAN by coming to this forum - but since I'm still getting corrupt files from a save to the hard drive, it makes me wonder about this application.

I have not isolated what caused the corruption, but I have my eye on importing slides from other files as a possible problem...

Using Captivate 1 (we will be upgrading to Captivate 2 within the month), I have had a few corruption problems. Saving to my HD instead of directly to the LAN has solved the problem so far, although as creative99999 says, problems may pop up anyway.

I do know that with Captivate 1 it is best to keep your slide numbers to under 65. For larger movies, I have created what I call "mini movies", exporting to SWF, then inserting into a slide as an animation. So, in the end, I technically have over 125 slides, but it ends up just being under 65 with the mini movies.

I have had this problem repeatedly - files corrupting in the middle of a project. Becoming slow to open a text caption box or taking to long to save is usually my first indicator that the file has gone corrupt - but then it's too late. Look at the file size compared to others that you know aren't corrupted. I've noticed the file size of my corrupted ones to be 4 times the size of a non corrupt file! - another indicator it's corrupt.

After many rewrites due to corrupt files, the only solution that saves me having to rewrite the whole thing is to save incrementally as Larry points out above. It doesn't fix the corrupt - just saves you time when you inevitably have to redo the whole thing.

And No, I don't save to a LAN - I save to the hard drive and then transfer over to the LAN. But I have had corrupt files both ways - saving to the hard drive and saving to the LAN directly. It gets corrupted either way.

I've tried opening the corrupt file and not knowing which slide is corrupt, I started eliminating 5 slides at a time and resaving. The file size was still huge with only 3 slides left in the file!

Hello stargirl62651,

When you try opening this, what sort of error do you receive? Also when attempting to close the Start page, are you prompted to save your project fie? If so, then this is normally a clear indication that the project as become corrupted.

One way that I have found to be very effective to test whether the file is indeed corrupted is to create a new blank Captivate file and then try importing the slide from original project, if Captivate cannot import the slides or crashes half way through then you know that there is a problem

However, you might also find that you can import some of the slides before and or after the slide that is causing you the problem.

HTH

Regards,
Mark

quote:

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My boss says that the file might be corrupted.

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Hi stargirl,
Yes, it could be a corrupted object on one of the slides in your project. Or - because you said it is a " really big file" - it could be that you have done the impossible - created a stone so large that even you cannot lift it.

I'm not making light of your problem . . . in fact it is very possible that you have created a file too large for your current development machine to open. You might try opening it on a more macho PC if you have one with Captivate installed.

The most obvious suggestion is probably too late already: That is to use "Save As" on a regular basis when working with large files and keep multiple dated copies of your work available so that you never lose it all in the event of a crash - or a refusal to open . . .

Sorry for your problem . . .
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